Generally, a refrigerator is used to keep food or beverage in a refrigerated or frozen state for a long time or to cool them rapidly. The refrigerator includes a freezing compartment and a refrigerating compartment opened or closed by individual front doors. To supply cold air to the freezing compartment and the refrigerating compartment, the refrigerator has a compressor, a condenser, a capillary tube and a cooling device to perform a cooling cycle. The compressor compresses a coolant at a high temperature and pressure, and provides thus compressed coolant to the condenser. Then, the condenser condenses the compressed coolant at a low temperature and pressure by releasing heat of the coolant. The condensed coolant is then converted into a liquid state of a low temperature and a high pressure while it passes through the capillary tube. The low-temperature high-pressure condensed coolant is then directed to the cooling device installed at a rear side of the freezing compartment. The coolant sent to the cooling device is converted into a low-pressure state again while it passes through a coolant pipe in the cooling device, and finally evaporates, thereby reducing the temperature in the freezing compartment and the refrigerating compartment.
Recently, along with a rise in the living standard, there have been increasing demands for diversified types of special-purpose refrigerators. Developed to meet such needs are, for example, a kimchi refrigerator equipped with an evaporation pipe and a heating wire for the ripening of kimchi, a cosmetic cooler for storing cosmetics at a low temperature by cooling a cosmetic storage compartment with a relatively small volume by means of a thermoelectric element, and so forth.
A conventional refrigerator for cooling stored goods by using a thermoelectric element has been manufactured to have a direct type scheme in which the thermoelectric element directly makes contact with an aluminum box inside the refrigerator for cooling.
However, in the direct type refrigerator using the thermoelectric element, since the cold is transferred via the aluminum box, a cooling speed is low and it is difficult to transfer the cold uniformly all over the stored goods in the refrigerator. Thus, there are drawbacks in that it is difficult to achieve temperature uniformity and higher cooling efficiency.
Further, if the cooling speed is made higher due to the above drawbacks, power consumption is increased accordingly.